


more than a string of letters

by philthestone



Series: nursery 'verse [16]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: New Republic Era - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, also The Twins u know they do poke their way into all these fics, continuation of that sweet sweet Skywalker Family Baggage, more space linguistics as it were
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 23:04:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13223109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: She catches herself, seems to carefully formulate her next words before saying them:“In a hypothetical situation, if someone – if someone knew someone, and they were a horrible person and did all sorts of horrible things but then they sort of – weren’t? Even though they still did all those horrible things? Would it make sense that the person whoknewthem wanted to forgive them even though, hypothetically, this person really didn’twantto forgive them, or – or couldn’t. Would it make sense that they sort of wanted to, anyway?”Han stares at her in the darkness, and she looks back, large eyes glinting brandy in the light from the traffic whizzing past their window.“Ah. Right. Well.”“Yes,” she agrees. “Well.”He sighs; best just to bite the bullet.“You had a dream about your dad.”





	more than a string of letters

**Author's Note:**

> companion piece to "there in the space full of words"
> 
> i miss these goobers

Luke came to the conclusion years earlier that getting caught in the middle of Arguments was generally very bad for his overall health. A significant claim, given that his profession involved shooting plasma bolts at attacking TIE fighters. So perhaps it’s not so strange that, laden with takeout from Dex’s café and still blinking blearily from his hyperspace jump to Coruscant, he hesitates outside the apartment door when he hears raised voices.

Leia had said “come on up,” and she sounded cheerful enough – but then, he supposes, the sentiment might have changed in the five minutes it took him to navigate the staircases and lifts of the old Imperial Palace. Even setting aside its somewhat twisted history (something that Luke does on the daily), it really is just _far_ too complicated an architectural setup for anyone’s good, not least a farmboy hailing from the three-room huts on Tatooine.

(Leia had said, once, that she might have liked to live in a place like that. Luke had laughed, and rolled his eyes, and told her that she couldn’t have bared the sand, or the drought, or the constant need to make sure the Hutts didn’t have any of your friends killed in a back-alley sand dune.

The isolation, Luke had said – that’s what you’re thinking of. But then, that’s nothing a tin can in space couldn’t address, if that’s all she needed, and she’d had one at her fingertips for years, now.

She’d hit him, gently, on the arm. It was a good feeling, being able to tease her like that.)

So Arguments are a blast zone that even he doesn’t think he’ll survive, years of experience backing this claim. But when he reaches out to his sister through the Force she doesn’t balk, or send him away, and she’s not – upset, exactly.

More … irate. _Frustrated._

The door swishes open under the pads of Luke’s gloved fingers.

“I _have_ to go,” Leia is saying, gently swatting Jacen’s hand away as he tries to tug at her braid, leaning precariously over from where he’s balanced on the crook of her arm. “I can’t _not_ go, it’s my job, there are a hundred things that could go wrong and –”

“You _just_ got back. Literally two days ago, Leia, I don’t care if half the galaxy’s about to implode, you’re eight months pregnant –”

“Seven and a half,” she corrects, looking pained. “And it’s not like I _want_ to go, Han, I’d actually very much rather _not_ , but if you haven’t forgotten, I raced after you all on the dreadnaughts when I was seven months along with the twins, so –”

“Something tells me that really shouldn’t be your standard of living, Leia,” Luke says, and Leia’s head jerks around to look at him; she makes a face, as though annoyed that Luke startled her. Han, who jumped slightly when he saw Luke standing unannounced in the doorway, lets out a triumphant little noise and crosses his arms.

“Thank you, Luke.”

“Hassoo Unca Woowk!” Jacen declares gleefully, momentarily losing interest in his mother’s hair. Leia bites her lip.

“But the bill that’s being –”

“Can wait,” says Luke firmly, putting the bag of takeout down on the caf table and leaning down to peck a kiss on Jaina’s forehead, where she’s sprawled on the floor chewing on a plush mewsk toy. “Frwooo,” she says around it in way of greeting, large hazel eyes lighting up with excitement. “You’re stressed enough as it is.”

“ _Thank you_.”

“That’s enough from you,” says Leia, pointing a finger at Han; he doesn’t react, merely slumping back against the too-glossy kitchen table in a folding of lanky limbs, which makes Luke relax marginally; not an Argument, then. Just an everyday run-of-the-mill sort of thing. Which isn’t altogether surprising; thinking on it seriously now, Luke can count on one hand the number of major conflicts that have happened over the last few years – the most notable of which was four or so months ago, leading to three-am conversations about Han’s favorite childhood games on that awful couch of theirs.

 _The Hero With No Fear_ , Han had said, humorless. Luke wonders how much of that was connected to Leia’s persistent habit of meeting natural urges to know more about her past with more resistance than a drugged Zilobeast. 

“And, Luke,” his sister is saying, steamrolling – _there’s that Zilobeast,_ Luke thinks – “you can’t just –”

Luke raises an eyebrow, which he knows is categorically not enough to cut her off on its own, so he straightens himself and holds up a hand.

“You’re my sister. I want you to be healthy. And happy. And,” he adds, spreading his palms open, “Han’s right. You need to take it easy for a bit.”

“I thought you were loathe to let Han hear you say that,” says Leia, a tired sort of bite to her voice that does nothing to mask the obvious attempt at changing the topic.

“They’ve had you at it almost non-stop for the past two weeks,” says Han, and Luke has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling at the pointed way his brother-in-law ignores the quip. Actually, Luke thinks, smiling might be a good way to ease the undercurrent of tension in the room; a sliver of anger is flashing through Han’s eyes, muted but still there. Still not an Argument, but his patience for SpecForce and the NRHC and politicians in _general_ is thin enough as it is, Luke knows, let alone when they take advantage of people like Leia’s ingrained sense of duty.

(Privately, Luke shares that impatience.)

“Han –”

“I _promise_ I’m not pulling the protective card here. But hells, Leia, you got bags under your eyes the size of Kessel, and you haven’t been sleeping right to begin with –”

She snorts. “I’ve always got bags under my eyes.”

“My _point_ exactly,” says Han, throwing his hands in the air. Luke suppresses another smile – it’s a bit absurd, really, how used he is to these moments that they’ve become more amusingly familiar than intimidating.

Still – best be cautious. Past experience, after all. No amount of mellowing out can reduce danger of being caught in the middle of a _real_ Organa-Solo argument. 

“Bas Mama,” says Jaina from the floor, having removed the now-soaked plushie from her mouth to deliver this vital information. “Mama badds iss.”

“No, Mama doesn’t like having bags under her eyes, Jaya, that’s right.” Leia glares at the two of them. Neither wavers, though Han does put his hands on his hips.

Once again familiar, Luke thinks, to find solidarity in this. He can almost imagine they’re back on Endor, in those days After The Fact only – why would he ever want to imagine that, is the question. They were more exhausted then than they are now. 

And then:

“I’ll make hot chocolate,” offers Luke. “And I brought takeout from Dex’s. You could nap on the couch?”

Leia frowns, and Luke can almost sense the mistake before it happens: “Luke, you just got back. You should take a breather and –” She catches herself, and then throws a half-hearted glare at the smirk on Han’s face.

“You were saying, your highness?”

“Oooh, you _two_. _Fine_. But Fey’lya’s going to make a fuss.”

“Fey’lya’s _always_ going to make a fuss,” Luke points out, at the same time Han says irately, “Fey’lya can go stick it up hi –” (a cough, a pointed glance from Leia and Luke smothering his grin with a hand). He clears his throat sheepishly. “Um. You, uh, know what Fey’lya can go do.”

“Uh huh. And Drayson’ll make life difficult for the –”

“I can handle that,” says Han.

“And Ackbar wanted to –”

“Leia,” says Luke. “You have five seconds to sit down before I call Chewie over to _make_ you.”

“Right,” says Leia, glaring. “Fine, that’s – you can’t make me yourself?”

“The two of us together?” asks Han.

“Not a chance,” says Luke, grinning impishly. “You’d eat us alive.”

She finally cracks, lets out a weak laugh. Her eyes crinkle in the corners like they never used to before, but Luke feels something in his shoulders relax.

“I’d choke on the stubbornness,” she says, lips thinned, but Luke doesn’t stop grinning. Han’s muttered “look who’s talkin’,” is ignored in a dignified fashion.

**

Later, she wakes up on the squishy couch cushions and finds that Jacen is no longer tucked against her breast and that her head is resting on a pillow that must have been fetched from their bed sometime after she fell asleep, because it wasn’t there when she put her head down.

“Here,” Luke is whispering. “I kept you some hot chocolate.”

“Where’s Jasa?” Immediate, her eyes blinking open rapidly and flitting around the room, “and Jaya was right there on the floor –”

“Han snuck them away to bed,” says Luke, helping her sit up. “You fell asleep reading to them, remember?”

Leia does remember.

(She also remembers the feeling of not having any dreams for the first time in nearly six months.)

“Thanks,” she says quietly, accepting the still-warm chocolate from Luke’s hands and leaning back against the couch. “I don’t know how you can make this so well.”

“Top-secret Jedi talents,” says Luke, his face impassive, and flops down in a decidedly un-Jedi-like manner onto the adjoining armchair. “How’re you feeling?”

“Fine. Heavy.”

He grins. “It can’t be worst than with the twins?”

“I seem to have forgotten exactly _how_ heavy I’m capable of getting,” she says flatly, shifting on the couch. “And when I had the twins there was always the added bonus of fearing for my life that proved a great distraction.”

“You could try some of the meditation exercises I showed you.”

“I _have_ ,” she says, even half-asleep knowing how annoyingly stubborn she must sound, “they don’t _work_.”

Luke tilts his head, a half-smile curling the edge of his mouth, something far too knowing for Leia’s liking sparkling in his blue eyes. Luke always gets so incorrigible when he’s _knowing_. Leia wonders if it’s like this for all siblings.

“Has anyone told you you’re a terrible liar?”

“No, they haven’t, and you being my twin brother does nothing to assist you in your lie-detection schemes.”

Luke bursts out laughing and has to cover his hand with his mouth to stifle the sound when Leia makes a hasty shushing noise.

 _“Do you know what happens when you awaken sleeping babies?”_ she hisses, vehemence coming mostly from habit, instinct, _oh Force don’t wake them up or we’ll be up until dawn’s early light_ , and Luke shoves his fist further into his mouth. Their downy heads are deceptively lovely, these days – really, they’re incorrigible terrors just like their uncle and father.

And, well – maybe also a bit like her. She’s _here_ , isn’t she.

Leia leans back against the couch and clasps her hands in the non-existent space of her lap with as much dignity as she can manage.

“My _lie detection schemes_?” he manages, shoulders still shaking with laughter, and Leia sticks her tongue out at him childishly.

“Shut up. You woke me up mid-nap.”

“Sorry,” he says. “But you’d have had to move to the bed anyway.”

She makes a face into her mug of chocolate. The bed _is_ so much more comfortable than the couch. She hates this stupid couch. 

“Damn. I would have, wouldn’t I.”

“The treacherous couch lured you into a false sense of security,” agrees Luke, a hand half-covering his smile. His elbows, patchy where they rub against any available surface he can lean them on, rest on the armchair’s edge.

Leia raises a menacing eyebrow. “Are you mocking me, little brother?”

“That I am,” says Luke, leaning back in the armchair. “But I’m totally safe, because you’re too heavy to get up and hit me. Also, that’s _big_ brother to you.”

“You’re even worse than Han,” mutters Leia, cupping her hands around the hot chocolate’s warmth. “Teasing a poor helpless pregnant woman.”

He snorts; a testament to how much he believes in her, Leia supposes, that it’s a given she’s never really helpless.

But then – she wouldn’t say that. Not necessarily.

“I feel like I should be offended by that comparison,” says Luke, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “But I’m not.”

Leia laughs out loud, careful to muffle the sound with her hand – the acoustics in their living room are at times annoyingly good, given its stupidly high ceiling (Han’s words) and leans her head back against the too-large couch cushions, marveling at how easy it’s always been for them – even at the very start, there were no complications. That doesn’t mean they’re not still _carrying_ things, but – as she said. It’s in the implicit. 

And the heaviness dissipates a little with time, Leia thinks. After all her wondering –

A moment passes, and Luke says,

“So, are you happy you stayed at home and got some rest?”

“Well,” she sighs, grimacing. “I’m sure when I _do_ go back to work there’ll be a thousand things for me to deal with, but. I’m happy, yes. More than happy.”

“Good,” says Luke firmly. He makes to get up from the armchair, but Leia stops him, hoping that the jump of _something_ in the pit of her diaphragm doesn’t set him off. It’s easier to pick up on when they’re so close, even though she’s not nearly as trained as he is – like when they realized just who they were, someone flipped a switch and everything came rushing in at once.

“Wait,” she blurts, words coming in a rush that her politician’s tongue isn’t used to, even after so many years around these new, found members of her family. _Found_ , of course, is a fluctuating descriptor, bringing her back to those undefinable words of hers. Sometimes it feels like they’ve always been here, filling these gaps in her life. The people, she means – not the words. The words are new. “I need to tell you something.”

Things like that question, all those month ago, and this – this.

He slowly slides back down into the chair, and she doesn’t do it on purpose, but there’s a tug in her chest where he feels her reach out to him with the Force, softly, hesitantly, like she’s unsure what his reaction will be if she does.

She’s not unsure – she’s _not_. It’s just. It just _is_.

Luke’s eyes are soft and bright at once, always their familiar blue.

“Alright.”

“You know – how I asked you? A few months ago, what his name meant?”

He wets his lips, swallows. “Yeah.”

“Well, I was thinking –”

“It means ‘born of the gods’,” Luke blurts out, and suddenly there’s a nervousness, there in Leia’s chest, that she’s not wholly sure is her own. _He’s_ unsure, now – Leia clasps her hands. “Though, I know in Tatooine, people’d – they were. They’d consider the desert a sort of god? If you went out into the desert alone, you could get lost and no one would find you – swallowed up whole and if you survived, it’d be a damn miracle.” He lets out a small laugh. _The desert protects its own,_ he’d told her once, reciting it like an oft-repeated proverb or a piece of advice someone had once given him. _Aunt Beru_ , he’d said – _she’d say that kind of stuff all the time._ He was joking she knows now – it had all been half a joke, on some backwater base camp in the ass-end of the galaxy, Leia curled up in blankets pilfered from the Falcon, listening to Luke talk about his home planet and pretend that he didn’t ache with how much he missed it. She’s imagined the desert many times since then, and since Tatooine, held the clay walls and hot sand and rough, earthy fabrics in her mind’s eye and wondered what it would be _like_. That’s in the odd moments, in the times she has to breathe between diplomats and politicians and she can sit and think about her fancy, gilded apartment that she’s no longer accustomed to, no longer comfortable in in a way that makes her feel like a stifled part of her programming has been unearthed, almost like the bugs in the Falcon that Han manages to mess with enough that they go away for a few months at a time but always seem to return and cause trouble. 

“But. Saying that someone was born of the gods, it was like saying that they were – a part of the desert, almost. Born from it. Immune. Like a blessing, or a good-luck charm.”

 _Luke_ is her good luck charm, is the sudden, almost violently insistent thought that pops into Leia’s head.

“Oh.”

“It’s not Huttese,” he adds quickly, unnecessarily. “It’s – another language.” 

She can tell that he’s holding something back and doesn’t fault him for it, because things like this are –

They’re heavy, Leia thinks. And he’s _Luke_ and he’s the one person in the universe Leia trusts beyond all else in the strangest, most visceral sense, different from how she trusts Han (with his warm eyes and solidifying assuredness and constancy, and gods, Leia thinks, what a twist of fate) – but she knows. That he’s not saying everything.

It’s okay, Leia thinks. He’ll tell her, someday, she knows.

“No, it doesn’t sound Huttese,” says Leia quietly, and continues watching him. He exhales, and then smiles at her, like he knows that something in her is shifting.

Damned Force.

“I – I looked it up,” says Luke. “Sort of.”

“Thank you,” she says. She doesn’t say, _You’re a worse liar than I am, Luke Skywalker_ , but she does bite her lip and tilt her head. “You knew, that night. When I asked?”

“No,” he says, breath a sudden and honest rush, and Leia is absurdly glad that this time there’s nothing to hide away, irrationally, reflexively. “I honestly wasn’t sure at all – only some, uh, convoluted childhood theories. And my – our grandmother’s – some of her old stuff.”

“Shmi’s?” she breathes, and his eyebrows go up sharp and quick, like he’s remembering suddenly that of the two of them Leia is the one to have actually seen and heard their grandmother.

She was soft and hard at once, Leia remembers, worn and toughened but still hopeful. Leia wants to say that a part of her understood.

(She _wants_ to say it, but something about that feels – not right. Not just yet.)

(One day, she knows.)

“I only figured it out properly once you got me thinking about it,” he says honestly, tapping his fingers against his knees. “Aunt Beru’d tell me all these things about my grandmother and I remembered – well. Yeah.”

“Oh,” she says again. Worries her lip between her teeth. “Born from the gods. _Huh_.”

(He does not press, ask further, sense flickering with strands of spinning, uncertain golden light that are slowly fusing together and strengthening resolve, and she is almost grateful. _One day_.)

But,

“Leia,” he says, feeling her tense minutely as he says her name. “What were you going to –”

“It’s a nice name,” she says, and feels herself how suddenly the words come. “Born from the desert. You’re from the desert.”

“ _We’re_ from the desert,” he corrects quietly, watches as her eyebrows crease.

And then she looks up at him, and watches as she lets her her eyes soften, her forehead smooth.

“Renewed life,” she says. “Survival. That’s what it implies. Beating the odds, despite everything being against you.”

“I suppose so,” he says, like he’s not really thought of it like that.

She nods, once, and goes back to studying her fingers, laced together over the large bump in her midriff. She shifts on the couch – _damned uncomfortable_ , she thinks. Maybe she can ask Han and Lando to just toss it out of the window, one of these days, all the way down Coruscant’s many levels. Or Chewie – he’d do what she asked, Leia knows, on principle. Wouldn’t make a fuss.

That’d get people talking.

“You know,” she says, suddenly, and watches as her brother almost starts. “I had a dream. Or dreams. All of this last month. Or – month and a half. I don’t know.”

“You did?” Luke’s blue eyes are wide. “Like a vision, or –”

“It was about a little boy,” she says softly. And looks up. “He was so normal, Luke. Just a little boy. A little boy in the desert.”

“You –” His voice is working funny. “You dreamt. About him. About father.”

Her mouth twists at the word “father”.

“Yes. Yes, I guess I did.”

“What –”

“I haven’t forgiven him,” she tells him then, firmly and almost too loudly; she winces at herself. Luke stares at her, and the children are still sleeping, and Leia clasps and unclasps her hands. “I haven’t forgiven what he’s done. But –” She takes a deep breath, almost to steady herself – “A second chance. Using the name again.”

Luke’s inhale is barely audible; Leia grips her hands together and refuses to regret.

“You mean –?”

She smiles, slightly, barely, and the light in her eyes is daring him to say something.

(She can feel him, too – his realization, sudden and bright and it feels like a weight has been lifted off of his chest, but it’s _her_ chest, a sort of closure he didn’t even know he needed and _she_ did, too, didn’t she.)

“Han’s okay with this?”

“Technically,” she says slowly, twisting her fingers the slightest bit, “ _technically_ , he suggested it. Officially.”

She can see the beginnings of an amused smile twist at her brother’s lips and she makes a face, anticipatory.

“You planted the idea, though.”

“It’s a nice name,” she says, tone bordering on haughty – she doesn’t care, not _here_ , but Luke grins hugely, simply watching as her expression morphs from stubborn to uncertain.

She hates that she is – uncertain, that is. _Unsure_. It’s a thing they’re both going to be, she knows, for a while yet to come.

 _Not forgiveness_ , she can almost hear the thoughts flitting through her brother’s head. _Not entirely._ ___But detachment_.

“I think,” says Luke, in answer to her unspoken plea for his opinion, “that I trust your judgment. And Han’s.”

“Even in this?”

He leans forward and grabs her hand, small and soft, in his own. “Especially in this, little sister.”

“I’m older,” she says, reflexively, a response that may have started as a coping mechanism in those first few weeks of _knowing_ , and Luke seems unable to hold back his laughter, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a way that’s weirdly familiar – almost like she’s seen it on herself, in the mirror at night. 

She tries half-heartedly shushing him twice before giving in and joining him, their laughter bouncing against the living room walls and making Leia feel as though something she didn’t know she was holding was just released, only she did know – she _did_ know.

“There a party in here, or what?”

Han’s leaning against the doorframe, shirt half-unbuttoned and eyes tired. He’s smiling, though, and Leia’s smile grows, if possible, even brighter.

“Luke was being an incorrigible tease,” she tells him, and Han’s grin turns crooked.

“You’re putting your time to good use,” he says knowledgeably, “getting her while she’s incapacitated.”

“Obviously,” says Luke seriously, and Leia rolls her eyes.

“You’re both utterly ridiculous. And Nik’s being a right menace and sitting on my bladder so I’m leaving you to wallow in you ridiculousness while I make my way to the ‘fresher. Goodnight, you nerfs.”

 _Nik_ slipped out, she realizes, half-risen from her seat; she keeps her eyes on the horrid couch and hopes that it’s not too much.

“You decided on the name,” Luke says, simple as he ever was, and Leia glances up in time to see Han raise an eyebrow in a way that makes her think he’s either the most perceptive non-Force sensitive Luke’s ever met or he overheard part of the conversation.

(Probably both, Leia decides, and lets a warm smile curl over her teeth as she pushes past her husband, one hand bracing momentarily over his chest, where his heart beats.)

“Jaya and Jasa have already started callin’ the poor kid ‘Ick’, so it’s not like we can back out now, can we?”

“ _Ick_ ,” Luke says. “Oh, Force.”

“Yep. Hey, sweetheart, the ‘fresher light’s being funny, so just –”

“Got it,” says Leia, halfway down the hallway already. “You’re fixing that tomorrow.”

“Kracken’s on a mad streak this week, so someone else is fixing that tomorrow.”

“I could,” offers Luke casually, crossing his arms behind his head, and Leia can practically hear Han shoot him an amused look.

“You just don’t want to volunteer to babysit again, ‘cause if you do Leia’ll start huffing about how you spoil ‘em.”

“Damn, you’re onto me,” says Luke; Leia doesn’t turn around before calling out and letting her voice carry down the hallway, back in their familiar back-and-forth: 

“I do not _huff_!”

“She does,” Luke tells Han, and he laughs, scratches the back of his neck.

“You wanna crash here tonight?”

“Your couch is uncomfortable,” he says, and suddenly there is a bubble of warmth in the Force, Leia can _feel_ it, can feel it coming from _her_. That’s not happened before, she thinks, barely bothering to close the ‘fresher door behind her and dropping her pants, and something about it lightens her already light chest. “But I suppose if I _must_.”

She grabs hold of the feeling, and _reaches_ for the second time that evening.

_Sweet dreams, Leia._

_You too, little brother._

_I’m_ older _._

 _That’s_ manifestly _untrue._

(Leia wakes up the next morning and tells him, relief cracking in her voice, that she dreamed of the lake in Alderaa.)


End file.
